Texans facing should-win after big win over Bears

Against the Jaguars, Arian Foster and the Texans shouldn't expect a similar slugfest. (Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle)

And now, for their encore performance, the Texans need to crush the Jacksonville Jaguars like a June bug under a bulldozer.

That’s what 8-1 teams are supposed to do against an inferior opponent like the Jaguars (1-8), who lost to the Texans 27-7 in the second game of the season.

The Texans are favored by 16 points — the largest spread in their history. The last thing they can afford is to take Jacksonville lightly. Not after the extraordinary performance on Sunday night in Chicago, where they proved they can beat anybody anywhere any time.

After the Texans steamrollered the Bears 13-6 in the wind and rain at Soldier Field, Chicago middle linebacker Brian Urlacher was asked his opinion of running back Arian Foster.

Foster carried 29 times for 102 yards against eight- and nine-man fronts. He caught five passes. He scored the game’s only touchdown on a spectacular diving catch from 2 yards out.

“Badass,” is the way Urlacher described Foster.

That’s an appropriate one-word description of the Texans, not just Foster, because it just about sums up what they’ve become nine games into the season.

NBC’s national television audience witnessed the Texans getting down and dirty — in the mud and the blood — with the physical Bears.

Before Sunday’s games, Fox studio analyst Howie Long, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, brought up something others were thinking: Everyone would find out against the Bears if the Texans were for real.

They are. They proved it. Now believe it.

Playing in unpredictable conditions that placed even more significance on field position, the Texans won a battle of survival by delivering more punishment than they absorbed.

League leaders
Now the Texans are tied with Atlanta for the best record in the NFL.

“The more ways you find to win in this league, you get more confidence because you never know when you show up what it’s going to take on that given day,” Kubiak said Monday. “Last night, I think we knew what it was going to take, but were we willing to do it? Could we go toe-to-toe with them in that type of game and be patient and do all those things we needed to get done?”

The answer was a resounding yes.

“It’s got to give us confidence, because we have some really tough road games coming up,” Kubiak said about trips to Detroit, Tennessee, New England and Indianapolis. “Things like that (winning at Chicago) give you a chance to be a great team.

“There will be nothing false about what we are when we get there at the end. Because we’re in some tough situations, and the more we handle them, the better we get.”

Taking theirs
Respect has to be earned, and the Texans have been earning it since the end of the 2010 season when Bob McNair refused to fire Kubiak and instead hired Wade Phillips as defensive coordinator. The Texans are 19-8 over the last two seasons, counting the playoffs.

Since losing 42-24 to Green Bay, they’ve won three consecutive games and allowed only one touchdown.

“I don’t know what we showed people (against the Bears), but I know what we’re proving to ourselves,” Kubiak said. “The most important thing is: What are they feeling in the locker room?

“We faced circumstances that we needed to rise up to. It was obvious from the minute that you showed up to the stadium what type of football game you’re going to have to play to win. We proved
we can do that. Regardless of what it takes, we can win those types of games.”

Now they better prove Sunday they won’t play down to the competition and become the victim of the biggest upset in the NFL this season.